Serious question, any kind of help will be greatly appreciated. Who are some philosophers that don't require that much prior reading, that allow you to just jump straight in their work and consume it all in a fairly straightforward way? I'm fairly new to the whole ordeal, having studied Plato, Aristotle and a bit of analytic philosophy, and I'd say that both Plato and Aristotle are very accessible but that some analytic philosophy is too (I might be wrong in my assessment). I'm curious about some other philosophers though, people like Descartes, Augustine, Nietzsche, Kant, Hume, Schopenhauer...
Any charts tailored for a specific author or a specific "genre" (for lack of a better word) would probably help me the most. Cheers and thanks in advance.
Accessible philosophers?
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Camus probably
Descartes.
If you've already studied Plato and Aristotle I'd recommend reading some histories of philosophy that take you down to the early modern period and then just start reading early modern philosophy. Check out earlymoderntexts. Also check this lecture series out if you're metaphysically and epistemologically oriented:
youtube.com
Frankly if you were autistic as fuck and not looking to dabble, I'd recommend Windelband's History of Ancient Philosophy, Copleston's History of Medieval Philosophy, Copenhaver and Schmitt's History of Renaissance Philosophy, if you're a completionist faggot then maybe read some more classical primary sources like Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus, then maybe read Popkin's History of Scepticism (the most recent edition since he updated it several times) and begin reading the early moderns, maybe Machiavelli to start (you can get nice Discourses/Prince bundles) and maybe Montaigne if you're a completionist but then just read Descartes chronologically and then do the same for subsequent major thinkers like Spinoza Pascal if you want etc., Hobbes Locke, probably just read a decent anthology (Wiener) or secondary source on Leibniz because Leibniz wrote 650 volumes worth of shit, Hume obviously, and then you can pretty much go into Kant. At any point along the way if for some reason you take a special interest in side figures like Vico or even less often read but often cited as background figures like Malebranche or Wolff then go for it.
Could also read Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations, Koyre's Closed World to Open Universe, Funkenstein's Theology and the Scientific Imagination.
For German idealism read every on of Beiser's books and start reading primary sources chronologically.
Descartes
Hegel and Kant
unironically this
Hume is relatively straight forward and "pure." Contemporary critique on capitalism, kinda philosophy, is also very accessible without prior knowledge.
This shit would take five fucking years
What philosophical concepts are you interested in, OP? If you want philosophy not to lose it’s mystical power , read the late Wittgenstein and Richard Rorty as late in the game as possible. Or start with Philosophical Investigations, then read Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. That’ll make reading philosophical texts much less serious and more fun.
>ALL that academic material
If I were you, I'd tell people to start off by reading something short and easy like Plato's Meno instead of assuming they'd already gone through that, and then telling them to go deep into long, dense, expensive, and difficult to find works like the ones you mentioned.
Additionally, I'd tell them to read Euclid's Elements before first looking into Aristotle or Kant, mostly because I believe that being exposed to serious logical rigour would make more sense than to go deep into discussions about logical rigour itself and proofs.
The americans founding fathers are pretty accessible they write in understandable english in the original so if you can read this you'll get them. Read a collection of the political writings of John adams and am currently reading Madisons. good stuff.
Are you interested in political philosophy at all? All of political phil is quite accessible - read a few greeks, jump straight to enlightenment - Hobbes, Mach, Locke, Rousseau, then branch out to whatever you feel like
They were political thinkers, not philosophers. Philosophy proper is Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. Everything else is stuff that has sprung from it.
also don't do this
Maddison, Hamilton and Jay are just rehashing Locke and Montesquieu, you're not missing anything if you skip them
The only work of philosophy that has any truth to it is Plato's Parmenides dialogue.
Read almost everything by him but thank you for the recommendation!
Any particular book as a good starting point? Or does it pretty much boil down to Discourse + Meditations?
Why do I have a feeling that they aren't very straightforward?
Alright, will definitely check him out. Again, any particular starting point?
As others have mentioned, this seems like it would both take too long and suck the joy out of learning these things. Thank you for the help though, I think I'll watch a good deal of those Holmes lectures.
Some philosophical concepts/branches I'm interested in are
>the nature of reality (basically Plato's forms)
>the nature of numbers and mathematical objects (think Frege and Badiou)
>philosophy of religion (something like Anthony Kenny)
>the mind-body problem (Aristotle's De Anima)
I probably sound like a complete amateur but I'd love to learn more about these things.
>I believe that being exposed to serious logical rigour would make more sense
I have read most of Aristotle's stuff and I'm a mathematician so I'm not much alienated from serious logical rigor - it's the reason why I pretty much started with analytic philosophy in the first place. But like I said, I'd like to branch out "a bit".
Not really in my sphere of interest but thank you.
The Republic is the only thing that I guess might count as political philosophy that I've read, but it's probably something I'll hold off of for now.
do NOT read Wittgenstein without first reading other philosophy of language, otherwise you might fall for his social constructionsim bait
Haven't read Locke or Montesquieu yet so I can't attest to their assessability. But they seem to flesh out these principles a lot. John Adams expands on what aristocracy is and mixed government. While Madison has this concept of expanding the scale of republican government to ensure the rights of the minority from majority rule.
>not listing ethics
What.
Anything else?
Start with Peirce
Read Kierkegaard as he actually writes like a human and he's widely considered the father of existentialism
Start with Deleuze
The Greeks because they invited philosophy
Max Stirner really doesn't.
Imho you can understand nietzsche without reading other philosophers
>greeks invented philosophy
bruh moment detected
no they are fine. they depart enough from locke in the federalist papers for it to be philosophically interesting
or might be more accurate to say they expand on rather than depart. it's kind of like reading applied political philosophy